SimTools - What's Next for development

Anything selected should silently start in your system tray.
(I could probably add the option to have them star,t but not drop to the system tr,y in this app)

This would only be possible if all games outputted what vehicle or air craft is in use.
And I'm afraid that is not the case and is more of a single game feature.
It does not mean that a addon would not be possible to cover certain games, but I don't think its something that should be built in as it won't work for everything.
I will keep thinking it over thou, because I would like it to work this way, I'm just not sure its possible on a grand scale is all.

I think the API's get us as close as we can with doing this.
Even now you simply just edit a few sub routines and assign some settings.

The hard part is knowing how to get all the data from the game and making sense of it.
Unfortunately there is no one way gather data from games as they all are pretty different.
And almost certain to change int he future.

Take care!
yobuddy

I just finished wrestling with the Soft Startup and Shutdown features.
Getting them to work together nicely was trickier than I thought it would be.

The most challenging part thou was the soft restart, where any input but especially roll, pitch or yaw would roll-over from say -180 to 180 during the restart and cause big problems.
Then once that was fixed, going past zero was now a problem. (so yea heave does not work among others)
And it just kept going and going... lol ... until I finally outsmarted it.

Anyway, after allot of failed experiments to make it work how I wanted it too, I can finally say its up and running!
Here is a gui shot so far...


We will have to see if there is enough range on each slider.
But that's easy to adjust as we go.

Take care,
yobuddy

Whats up guys!
Here is whats been going on...

More work on polishing all the new features, and a whole lot of testing, but everything seems good to go so far.
Besides that, all of the Axis Assignment filters have been redone and polished for the next release.
(With all of these filters being tested to make sure they work together nicely on a big 6dof rig.)
The filters have come a long way for sure.

Soon I should be able to compile a beta and let some long time users look for bugs.
For now thou, take care!
yobuddy

Yes, it works very well.
But if the game zeros out the data when pausing or leaving the game, the same thing will happen.
It all really depends on how the game delivers its telemetry data.
In most cases I expect it to work. (and I don't see why the soft startup would not always work.)

Take care,
yobuddy

Just a quick update...
All of the filters in axis assignments have now been completely redone.
Washout works so, so much better now, and the speed at which it returns is constant thru all titles.
There is even a dedicated Traction Loss filter now too.


Being that I am starting to forget all the updates I've done for v2.4.
I think it may be time for a release.
v2.4 testing will begin shortly.

Take care,
yobuddy

SimTools v2.4 internal testing has started!
And theirs allot of fun stuff to test...

SimTools v2.4 Update and Changes
- New GameManger Profiling corruption detection system.

If GameManger detects a corrupt file, It will:
1) Load the backup
2) IF the backup profile fails, it will load the default profile for the game.
3) IF the default profile fails, it will create a new profile.​

- Output Testing has been revamped. (Gone is the 3..2..1.. countdown).

(It now only takes about ~0.5 seconds to start or stop output testing)​

- Soft Centering & Soft Startup / Resume! I know allot of you have been waiting for this.

Soft Centering = you press the Pause button and the sim slowly Centers.
Soft Startup / Resume = You Un-Pause the game and the sim slowly gets Back to Speed.​

- All of the Axis Assignment filters have been redone and polished.
- All New Axis Assignment filter Traction Loss
- All New Axis Assignment filter Washout
- All New Axis Assignment filter Smoothing
- Axis Assignment filter GUI updates
- Completely refined GameEngine motion computation engine
- Updated AMC interface
- New Tuning Center ‘Save Gui Flash’ indication
- New GameEngine Logging system (entertainment license only)
- All internal SimTools communication has been completely overhauled for speed and efficiency.
- GameDash and GameVibe communication was also overhauled.
- PCars 1 & 2 fix (I can't get PCars to crash GameVibe anymore, I think its fixed?)
- Company Tools now includes GameDash and GameVibe (with auto correcting re-setup - com ports/sound card settings)
- GameManger and GameEngine are now live synced!

(Select a game profile and the other app has it selected too)​

- GameManger and GameEngine connection and re-connection chatter is completely gone. (Now super efficient!)
- Game Engine now has 3 running modes. (Default is Standard)

In Standard mode, everything works as it always has.
In Game Engine Advanced Mode, you will get per GameManger profile Min / Max settings.
In Game Engine Expert Mode, you get per GameManger profile Min / Max settings, plus different Min / Max settings for Axis Assignments (a) and (b).​

- Everything is now compiled against .net 4.6 (to retain vista compatibility)
- The SimTools Installer now downloads and installs .net 4.6 should it be missing or out of date.
- Using a Min or Max value in tuning center of zero is now the equivalent of Turing that direction off.
- All new Min / Max files now default to all zeros.

Keep you posted

You have been busy @yobuddy and it is great to see the ongoing development and refinement of SimTools.

I and others will eagerly await this latest update, post internal testing and bug squashing.